


The Pair of Aces

by GettingMetaphysical



Series: All by Myself: A Doctorcest Storyline [12]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Doctorcest, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Hurt, Introspection, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mind Manipulation, Missing Scene, Multi, Romance, Self-cest, Time Travel, doctorbation - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:39:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: None - Warning
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3209555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettingMetaphysical/pseuds/GettingMetaphysical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are on one out of many missions, vital for their survival. Together, the Tenth Doctor uncovers another uncomfortable truth about himself. The pointers are placed, more clearly this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pair of Aces

**Author's Note:**

> (A very plot-driven, spiritual sequel to "The Whims". This details a tiny bit on what happened in-story to the Doctor between the end of the Time War and "Rose".)
> 
> * * *

  
“Come along now, Doctor!”

A young-looking, light-skinned man in a tweed jacket, bow tie and Stetson hat ran across the rubble, clearing the smoke as he went, his screwdriver buzzing and tracking the traces. Another man, ganglier and dressed in a striped brown suit, followed the green light, his own device blue and whirring for the right signs. The probability of the first man finding what they sought was higher, seeing as he had been there before.

Meanwhile, the second man witnessed the aftermath of a terrible scene. The inhabitants of this planet had fled the place in the opposite direction, and following their tracks meant running straight into danger.

“Oof! What the -” He had collided with someone, but that someone had crashed with his side instead of front or back.

“Sorry!” the wavy-haired but otherwise bird-like presumed female gasped. ”…Hey, you look a lot like that alien who went into the ruins,” she chirped. ”You are related?”

“Same species, yeah,” the Doctor got up and made to follow his tweed-clad partner, but the bird-woman grabbed his forearm.

“Take this, pleased-to-be.” She shoved a bottle of shimmering, blueish liquid in his hand. “He got poisoned probably, by the plants in the ruins. They infected our ground, but seems he has rid it of them. This serum is cure for outsiders. Ours are red.”

The Tenth Doctor lit up with a dazzling smile. “Thank you!” He started running after the now distant green light in the smoke, but stopped to spin around and yell: “What’s your name?”

“Oswelld!” she rasped back, already sprinting away from the scene. Ten mirrored her.

“ELEVEN!” he cried. “I’ve got something important!”

“That’s perfect, Ten!” the Eleventh Doctor called from down below great, steaming, ripped apart chunks of earth. “I’ve got SOMEONE important!”

Ten skidded down the hot slopes, finally reaching his future self, who was lifting aside moldy blocks and sizzling, burnt-smelling roots. Ten sighted the mucked-up leather jacket and the mud-covered, pale face between the roots, and craned a big one out of the way for Eleven to drag out their past self. The Ninth Doctor felt cold, drained of colour, but both hearts still beat. And as their screwdrivers told them, his bloodstream was poisoned.

“Off to his TARDIS,” the oldest Doctor instructed, and the two heaved the larger, unconscious man onto their shoulders, dragging him through the foul-smelling landscape. With some help from the locals, they found the blue box of a ship and carried him inside.

Eleven told Ten to get their patient into the medic’s chair while he programmed a new location for the TARDIS, whose engines will hum in confusion at this particular Doctor using the coral desktop theme. The Doctor with the sideburns is just as perplexing an addition, but nonetheless, she aids him by letting him find everything where he expected it to be, and he wringed the youngest man out of his jacket, hooking needles into his forearms, preparing to pump the serum into his system.

“No time to scan the stuff, trust me! Plug us in!” Eleven shouted over the noise of the traveling ship, which landed squarely beside the Tenth’s Doctor’s TARDIS. One mile away from the scene, on a hilltop with no locals around.

Once the blue liquid was fastened and dripping, the effect was immediate. Ten exhaled in relief when the apparatus connected to the youngest man showed his levels stabilizing, while Eleven wasted no time to wedge their patient’s mouth agape. The poison, now turned into harmless mists, billowed out, slowly but surely leaving the Doctor’s body.

They began cleaning him, wiping the mud from his face and body, sanitizing little cuts and scratches. Eleven got out a combined scrubber and vacuum for his clothes. Finishing up, the owner got clad in his leather jacket.

“How’s my blood?” Ten asked.

“Clean. The fever?”

“Still going.”

Eleven shifted in his seat. “He’ll wake up in a minute.”

“You must be mistaken, ’cause I can’t remember that.”

“Then you tell me, Doctor.:.” Without loosing eye contact, the oldest Doctor reached for a drawer attached to the chair, and held up a small, silver and white gadget. It looked like a minimalistically designed gun, and one side of it consisted of a display covered in numbers. “What is this for?”

“What!” Ten smacked his hand over his mouth.

“Look at your tie, Doctor. Look at me. Look at the ceiling. Notice anything?”

Ten’s eyes widened, as he pawed his suit pockets and pulled out his brainy specs. “Great Gallifrey,” he whispered.

“Yes, Ten. It’s time.”

“But, just a week ago, we were fooling around in this TARDIS…” The younger man eyed the ceiling, and his fellow selves like he’d never seen them before.

“Not a week ago. Seventy years from now, we’ll be doing that. This is something different, and it’s important. Actually, it’s ridiculously vital. D’you follow, Doctor?”

Ten swallowed, very visibly.

“Good.”

“I thought… we wouldn’t do this, until I was older.”

“We can’t, Ten,” Eleven said, peeking at him with old eyes. Knowing. He flicked his finger over some parts of the display, and handed the wipe-gun to his young counterpart. “It would wreck me to save all the bad things for when each body’s grown old and bitter.”

“I remember,” Ten murmured.

“Chronology is a luxury.”

“I know, Doctor.” Ten ran a hand through his messy, sweaty hair.

The apparatus beeped as a low voice groaned, shocking them both.

“Here we go,” Eleven whispered, suddenly adjusting a bright spotlight above their heads.

The Ninth Doctor squinted in the sudden light.

“Am I dead?” he murmured, punctuated by a cough.

“Silly Doctor, no you’re not,” Eleven cooed, squeezing his shoulder.

Nine eyed them both, muttering. “I thought so…” A hacking cough. “Never believed in that sort of thing, myself…”

“Just lie very still, mate,” Eleven chatted while unplugging the needles from the youngest Doctor’s forearms. “You’ll be back on track in no time but the right time. Ten?”

Ten leaned over `Nine’s other side. He fiddled with the buttons on the gun. Long ago, he felt why Nine’s icy gaze was empty, why his face was closed and bitter. Leaning forward, he rested a palm along his previous face’s cheekbone, and the gun against his opposite temple.

“I am so, so sorry.”

 _Fyuiiiiip_ , popped the gun; _whoosh_ , went his head. Like a hard gust of wind, the faces Nine saw were ripped away. Leaving nothing but the vague idea of _wide-brimmed hat + bow tie, glasses + neck tie_.

Pointers.

Pointers that wouldn’t make the least bit of sense until he looked in the mirror decades later. That man in the glasses cradled the Ninth Doctor’s head, watched him fall unconscious while the one with the hat whirled about the controls once more.

“Come now, Ten.” He tried to sweep the younger man with him on his way out.

“But Doctor.”

Nine’s face looked impossibly old to Ten. The lines were too deep, the features too bony, even for Nine. “Why can’t we just… just stay? Look at him, he’s underfed and his nutrition levels are low and he hasn’t slept in months and, and he needs us, Eleven!” he pleaded. “Why can’t we…?”

Eleven smiled without a trace of humor, nor joy.

“Don’t manipulate yourself, dear Doctor. We needed to make that memory.” The older Time Lord strolled back to the younger, and took his upper arm firmly. “That memory is crucial and you know so. Now we’ve made it, we’re leaving, and that’s final.”

“But-!”

“Don’t play games with yourself, Ten. Just come. Run with me.”

Even as he rose, Ten couldn’t take his eyes off of the youngest man in their younger ship. I’m sorry, he mouthed, and turned. He left him there, just left him to wake up in immortal frustration. He just ran out with their future, left their past to starvation and death wishes and cold, lonesome space.

“There’s nothing you can change, Doctor,” that future voice soothed, embracing him. “Easy now, plenty of time left.”

The Tenth Doctor watched the Ninth’s battered and battle-ready TARDIS fading away with each _wvorp_ ing noise. When it had vanished into the vortex, the two older Doctors were left looking at a misty view from the top of the stone-covered hill.

Still embracing.

His oldest self stroked his hair and mumbled to him about Nine. Nine would be okay, he would meet Ven the alien and Rose the human, and Jackie and Mickey and Captain Jack, and his hearts would burn again. And look, the two of them would keep visiting, sometimes apart and sometimes together and they would have fun. Don’t you remember, Nine found love and you kept that love. Shush now, my little hero, you.

Ten nodded against Eleven’s shoulder. Eventually, he freed himself and stood on his own, gangly body swaying in place for a bit.

The wind flew past them, tousling thick brown hair and tugging at their collars.

“The time traveler who fell in love with himself,” Ten stated.

Off the specs went and into some pocket, and he looked at the sunrise, the skies swirling with gold, yellow and light brown. “Y’know, the one from the fairy tale? I still think about that, sometimes. How I might’ve been the inspiration, had I not been so private with it. Or,” he added, glancing meaningfully at his older counterpart, “maybe I won’t be.”

“Who knows…” Eleven kept his hands clasped at chest-level. “But one has to admit, it’s a good story. Romantic, strange, positively alien. Yes…. A clever and tremendously dangerous story, at that.”

“Well,” Ten said, shifting his jaw a bit. “I would’ve named it tragically funny in that sort of narcissistic way, y’know? It’s kind of dark. First you get physical, and then you twist around and get metaphysical for the rest of your centuries-”

“Nine would’ve told you to shut up and kiss him already.”

“Yeah, but what about Eleven, Doctor?”

“Eleven likes it when that bloody romantic talks. About anything, as long as it’s good and genuine.”

“You remind me of Six, sometimes,” Ten said softly.

“Well, you’re awfully similar to Five. You’re both so… human.”

A chuckle escaped him. “For lack of a better word?” Ten turned to face himself, balancing on his heels and, yes, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I hope you recall we’re not similar enough for me to be afraid to admit that I love you. Cause I do, y’know.” Ten pecked him on the cheek. “I love you.”

Eleven raised a hand to stroke his cheek in turn. “I love you, too, you skinny idiot.”

“Ah, you’ve got some character development in there, Chinny,” Ten smirked.

The older Doctor couldn’t help but reflect the expression, and leaned in for a proper kiss. After all this madness less than an hour ago, it was nice that they both knew it would turn out alright, in the end. Next to a soothing cup of tea, bantering and cuddling seemed the second-best alternative.

It was here that Eleven were to leave himself a mental note.

“You really need to stop traveling alone, Ten. Get yourself some nice aliens, some less immortal species.” He patted the younger back. “Keeps you nice and chipper.”

“I don’t think I’m quite ready, personally.” Ten’s tone got a bit strained.

Eleven shot him a much more solemn look. “You know how we get when we’re alone. You especially need to watch out. Anyway,” he continued, lighthearted again, “it’s more fun traveling with company, don’t you think? Even if it is just another you.”

The younger man fired off a big grin. “What, y’think I should have myself as my companion?”

Eleven snorted, “Rassilon forbid.”

“That’s exactly what he forbade, actually,” Ten said, pointing back at him and winking.

Tipping his Stetson at the spot where Nine’s TARDIS had stood, the older Doctor walked to stand beside the doors of Ten’s.

“Youngsters first.”

As Ten went over, fiddling with his key, he pushed the brim of the peculiar hat over Eleven’s eyes.

“Why do you always wear that, anyway? You look ridiculous.”

Without missing a beat, the older man flicked it back up. “That’s the thing, Doctor. I can’t tell you.” He balanced on his heels - reminding Ten of their samehood - and took a deep breath.

“'I’m on a very personal mission, I have to understand',” the older Doctor recited.

“'We have to be safe',” the younger Doctor finished the mantra.

After the War, the two of them had together understood Eight’s vow. That self had sensed what kind of friend the Doctor would be to himself.

Whether he liked it or not, the Doctor was the final ace up his own, unaware sleeve.  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=53874>


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